The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.— Marcel Duchamp

Bob Kessel’s one man art show, “Newport Nauticals” in the summer of 2005 at the prestigious Museum of Yachting in Newport, Rhode Island, featured 65 pictures. It filled up the entire museum with a kaleidoscope of primary colors and geometric shapes.

The opening night reception drew hundreds of people from the cream of Newport society. They didn’t come just to look. Amid the swirl of drinks and live jazz music, sales of Bob Kessel’s artwork was brisk, with dozens of pictures sold.

Later that summer, several Newport Nauticals prints were purchased and then framed into plaques and awarded to the daily winners of the 2005 Rolex Swan American Regatta.

Cruising World Magazine wrote in it’s article, A New Nautical Perspective,

“Bob Kessel’s bold and geometric work bespeaks so convincingly of nautical imagery that it’s turned up again and again in the winner’s circles at regattas, at marine fund-raisers, and at maritime-art exhibits throughout New England, from Mystic, Connecticut, to the Museum of Yachting, in Newport, Rhode Island.”

They went on further to write, “It’s certainly all right by Kessel that a salty type making the gallery rounds might mistake his ink-on-paper drawings for international code flags. The illustrator-artist’s main motivation is to evoke in viewers deep and resonant responses to his vivid colors and shapes; for those who know and love the water, those responses often resolve themselves into perceived representations of what is essentially, nautically, familiar.” “My work is more about eliciting memories,” he says. “For each person, it elicits an individual response. I’ve witnessed a hundred people see a hundred different things in the same print. It’s great.”

The art show was originally intended to run only two months, until September 18th, but the popularity of the Newport Nauticals show was so great, that in an unprecedented move, it was extended several months until the end of the year.